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NEWSLETTER 149
 
VIRTUAL EVENTS GROUP
 

The biggest news out of ToyFair NY is that after more than 100 years in NYC, the Fair is decamping to New Orleans in 2026. This sent ripples through the 1,000 exhibitors and underscores both the changing cycles of how toys are bought and a tightening of the financial belt.

 
 
 
 
 
 
OCTOBER 26 | 3PM EST | ZOOM
 
Travel the World
 
The world of travel has changed. Planners carefully do their homework and event attendees want to see what they’ll experience before booking. Virtual travel plays a big part in the new try-before-buy world of travel. Susan Black, founder of Wowzitude, takes us on a tour. Read more about Black in this week’s WSJ. Mark your calendars for October 26th and RSVP here.
 
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IMEX | OCTOBER 17-19
BOOTH C5036 | MANDALAY BAY, LAS VEGAS
 
IMEX Slots Filling Fast
 
 

You didn’t want us to have time to catch our breath, did you? We’ll be working with the great folks at DAHLIA+Agency, broadcasting from IMEX to bring you a look at what’s new, what’s old, and what the future holds for conferences and events. If you’re attending and want to participate, you can sign up to be interviewed here.

 
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Lessons on Inserting Drama into Events
 

Here’s a question for anyone who’s ever set a conference agenda. Would you put your keynote speaker in a tight spot by inserting a last-minute surprise speaker you knew would rattle them to the core?


It’s a question I asked myself this week after watching Kara Swisher, who is a masterful interviewer with a flair for dramatic tension, at the Code Conference. The story is a bit convoluted, but juicy and instructive. Linda Yaccarino, now CEO of X (formerly Twitter), had, for months, been featured as one of the top-billed speakers at the Code Conference, a tech conference created by Swisher. Code has the reputation for bringing the top brass of technology companies to the stage and grilling (often skewering) them. 


Ostensibly (I believe this part) at the 11th hour, the Code Conference inserted Yoel Roth, former head of Trust and Safety, at what was then Twitter, to appear on stage just before Yaccarino’s appearance. Roth spoke eloquently about his reasons for leaving Twitter, including his discomfort with many of Musk’s decisions. Roth came across as earnest, informed, and tortured by Musk’s leadership. He received a standing ovation.


Yaccarino could have backed out when she found out that Roth would be a late addition to the program, but of course, that would not have looked good. Instead, she tried to put on her best gameface in an interview with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. Despite Boorstin’s carefully worded questions, Yaccarino looked horribly defensive and couldn’t sufficiently answer simple questions about X’s policies, current traffic, or ad revenues. She defensively distanced herself from the old Twitter but couldn’t articulate much about the new X. Multiple news reports portrayed her interview as tense and rattled, a dumpster fire and plain ‘ole bizarre. The X-verse exploded with second-day quarterbacks, many agreeing that Yaccarino had been ambushed by the last-minute Roth addition, and just as many siding with Swisher who said, Yaccarino should have been able to strut her CEO-ness and not appear unsure and uninformed. 


Gossip aside, the question is: does a conference planner owe it to their main speaker to give them a heads up about potential conflicts, or is all this fair in the name of drama-packed events? And equally important, should conference planners work to inject a bit more disagreement into their lineups? Diverse voices and different opinions add an excitement that many conferences lack. Finally, if you’re asked to speak, better know the context, the other players in the lineup, and come prepared. Can’t get enough of the juicy details? Listen to Swisher break down the Twitter/X showdown. 

 
 
 
What Writers and the Government Have in Common
 

Both the writers and the government got a reprieve this week. The government now has 45 days to get its parties in line and avoid a shutdown. The writers now have three years on their contract before they feel the guillotine of AI upon their necks. For now, they’ve got certain protections from AI but in three years, the situation will look very different. Not to say that you won’t need writers; you just might need a lot fewer of them. Jobs that AI won’t take over anytime soon: plumbing, electrical, dog-walking. Trade schools are looking better every day. 

 
 
 
WEEKLY
 
Scuttlebutt
 
 
OpenAI Gets Eyes and Ears
The pace of Generative AI progress is relentless. This week, for paying subscribers only, ChatGPT can now listen and respond to your voice commands. Typing in prompts is now passé. You can also load an image into ChatGPT for inspection and questioning. Wired offers some solid instructions on how to enable and use these mind-boggling new features.
 
 
Kevin Roose of the New York Times queries ChatGPT about the contents of his junk drawer. Image credit : Kevin Roose, NYT
 
 
 
@mckaywrigley shows how ChatGPT can recognize this image of a cell and describe it to a 9th grader. Image credit: @mckaywrigley on X
 
 
 

A Boss's Guide to Generative AI
I won’t forget the first website I had to design. I didn’t know the terminology, and hence did a miserable job of communicating my desires to developers. It’s a little jargony, but NoJitter offers a free download cheat sheet on how to speak AI.


Find of the Week? Sanebox. It’s insane.
I like to keep up on many different topics, from gardening to quantum, so it can take me 20–30 minutes a day to clear about 900 messages. So I tried Sanebox, which magically separates the junk from your important emails. The more you use it the more it learns about your personal kind of junk. Knowing you like to peruse and can’t trust machines to do everything, Sanebox stores what it identifies as junk in a separate mail folder that you can go through when time permits. It’s $99 a year for one email account; I can’t swear to its privacy rules; it works with all major email accounts like Gmail, and Outlook. I think I’m in.

 
 
 
Images used to test the response to different virtual backgrounds. Image credit: PLOS
 

What Your Zoom Background Says About You 
Is that philodendron wilted? Are my bookshelf choices too cliche? What if I over-rely on that lost-in-space background? If you think your Zoom backgrounds are hurting you, you might be right. A study on Virtual First Impressions in PLOS found that plants and bookshelves inspired the most confidence in your Zoom call viewers, so keep ‘em watered and stacked.

 

Also, if you’re going to use virtual backgrounds, make certain you’ve got good lighting, lots of graphics horsepower, and be sure to wear the right clothing. If not, you might get those ugly flickery artifacts, and when that happens, all anyone will notice is the glitch.

 
 
 
 
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Robin Raskin | Founder
917.215.3160 | robin@virtualeventsgroup.org

Gigi Raskin | Sales/Marketing

917.608.7542 | gigi@virtualeventsgroup.org